Well I'm not Richard - but he is a really nice guy and I'm a nice guy
too and have done some work on this before so I'll help you out.
What you are speaking of is commonly known as a "secret sharing
scheme".
Most people start with shamir's secret sharing scheme. check out wei
dai's crypt++ for an implementation.
You should understand that secret sharing is as much in the
theoretical realm as it is in the practical. It is nowhere near as
straight forward as the traditional key management mechanisms (and
even those are still being defined.)
With secret sharing mechanisms - there are questions such as:
- is the key generated centrally - i.e. with a dealer who can see all
the portions before they are distributed - or is it it done in a
distribute fashion
- and conversely is the key combined centrally for signature
verification allowing an unknown passive onlooker to pick out the
relevent bits (no pun intended)
Do a search on threshold cryptography. Get and read the final
chapters of Doug Stinson's book Cryptography Theory and Practice
Goto:
http://cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/ssbib.html for an up todate
bibliography on secret sharing.
Ultimately you'll be looking for the subject of "Threshold RSA"
Regards,
Andrew Gray
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